The Case for Black With a Capital B

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Continuing A Season of Peace: The Unity Walk for Mattapan

by Talia Whyte

Dozens of concerns residents from all over the city and surrounding suburbs gathered on Oct 2 at the corner of Blue Hill Avenue and Morton Street in Mattapan to participate in a unity walk, which was called together by the Rev. Jeffrey Brown of the Boston Ten Point Coalition in light of the murders of four individuals just a around the corner on Woolson Street a few days earlier. A man linked to the crime was arrested Oct. 1 at a Manchester, N.H., apartment complex on a fugitive-from-justice warrant and is scheduled to appear in Manchester District Court for a rendition hearing.

Despite all the discussion over the years about how to deal better with crime in the community, many feel that there hasn’t been much practical progress. One of the many complaints I heard from some people I talked to at the event was the lack of young adults participating in the conversation. The three people I interviewed in the piece were quite possibly the only walk participants under the age of 30. There was also a feeling that there were not enough people from the actual community where the crime happened participating in the walk either.

“This is a problem the black community has to deal with; not people from the suburbs who have no idea of our problems,” said Jason Critton, 34, of Mattapan, walking by where the walk was to begin. “We have to start taking responsibility for this wound that keeps bruising.”